


Enough

by TetrodotoxinB



Series: MCU Kink Bingo Round 2 [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Edge Play, Everyone is revisiting their trauma today, Fear Play, Impalement, M/M, MCU Kink Bingo, Penance - Freeform, Rape Play, Roleplay, Snuff, Square filled: snuff, all of this is consensual, beatings, electroshock, no one dies, non-life threatening impalement, rape role play, role play snuff, snuff is not actualized
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 03:10:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15306144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TetrodotoxinB/pseuds/TetrodotoxinB
Summary: Tony and Bucky are adults and as such they're civil. But civility and even understanding, can only do so much to erase what Bucky did to Tony's parents.





	Enough

**Author's Note:**

> Created for MCU Kink Bingo. Square filled: Snuff.
> 
>  
> 
> This does not have the Rape/Noncon warning, but it does contain simulated rape / rape roleplay. There is frank discussion of Bucky's past, including sexual abuse. This piece also contains graphic violence that, while consensual, may upset some readers. Discretion is advised.

Bucky flicked his pencil against the table as he tried to figure out what the hell forty-three across meant by “2013 Grammy winner.”

“Hey, Buck, how was arm maintenance?” Steve said as he unceremoniously dumped an armload of grocery bags on the kitchen counter.

Temporarily accepting defeat, Bucky tossed the pencil on the table and leaned back to watch Steve put their groceries away. “Eh, same as always.”

“You and Tony still not getting along then?”

“He fixed my arm again and neither of us tried to kill the other. I feel like it’s a win.”

“Bucky, that’s hardly a win. What happened wasn’t your fault. Howard and Maria-”

Sighing, Bucky ran his fingers through his hair. “Howard and Maria are dead because I killed them. Yes, there were extenuating circumstances. Yes, the blame lies with HYDRA. Yes, Tony and I both know that, but forgiveness and even absolution don’t mean we can be friends. He can’t look at me without knowing what I did, and I can’t look at him without remembering. Just be glad we can be civil.”

Steve frowned and his forehead creased disapprovingly, but for once, he didn’t argue.

*****

It was past midnight and Bucky had laid down over two hours ago. He had already given up on the prospect of sleeping and was slowing coming to terms with the fact that Steve had stirred up something in which Bucky had long since given up hope.

Howard and Maria’s deaths, while tragic, were hardly the worst things he had done for HYDRA. That he had known Howard did add an edge to the pain, but it was hardly a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of hurt from seventy years of violence. In that light, Bucky had tucked that particular regret away in the same place where he put every other murder and most of the Second World War. He didn’t expect Tony to do the same, never had.

But now Steve was suggesting that there was something beyond permanent guilt on Bucky’s part, and unending resentment on Tony’s. It was a possibility that seemed ludicrous while simultaneously sparking something like hope.

“Hey, J?” Bucky called out into the dark room.

“Yes, Mr. Barnes?”

“Is Tony awake?” 

“Yes, sir. Mr. Stark is currently working in his lab.”

“Thanks.”

Abandoning all hope of sleep, Bucky threw the covers off and climbed out of bed. Tony had waited more than two decades for closure, might as well not delay any longer.

*****

Tony was soldering some particularly small component under a rather large magnifying lens. Bucky waited at the back of the lab, not wanting to disturb his work to potentially deleterious effect. As soon as Tony flipped up his visor Bucky rapped his knuckles against the doorjamb. It went unheard over the deafening blare of AC/DC, but JARVIS took the cue and turned down the volume.

“Hey, Tony,” he called.

Tony dumped all his tools on the workbench and turned around. “Hey, Barnes. Something wrong with the arm?”

Bucky shook his head, suddenly unsure of what in the hell he was proposing. “No, it’s working fine, thanks. I, uh, I had something else I wanted to talk about.”

Tony nodded and peeled his work gloves off and pulled a metal stool out from under the table. “Alright, that’s ominous. Shoot.”

And that was where the plan fell apart. Hope only got someone so far, planning was actually the key to success and Bucky had walked into this without even a shred of strategy.

“Barnes? You alright?” Tony asked.

Bucky’s head popped up and he nodded mechanically. “Well, no, not really. Steve still thinks we should somehow be able to work out what happened.”

Tony huffed a half-hearted laugh and shook his head. “Spangles says a lot of things. Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know. I think I want to believe, but common sense says murder is a little over the line of normal reconciliation,” Bucky admitted.

“Yeah,” Tony agreed. “Look, I don’t blame you and I’m not angry anymore, at least not at you. But everytime I look at you…”

“You remember what I did,” Bucky finished.

“No, that’s not it. I-” Tony shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. What are _you_ looking for? Forgiveness? Because I already gave you that.”

“I don’t know how to forgive myself,” Bucky blurted. He stopped, suddenly aware that he had admitted to Tony something he hadn’t even realized himself. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”

“Probably not. But then neither of us is known for our fantastic sense of self-preservation.”

Bucky smiled ruefully. “Probably not. Listen, have a good night. I’ll see you… sometime.” He turned and started towards the door of the lab.

“If you could forgive yourself, what would that take? From me, I mean?”

“From you? I don’t know. Besides, you don’t owe me anything.”

Tony shrugged. “Let’s call it philanthropy. Something’s better than nothing, right?”

Bucky swallowed thickly. “Yeah. I guess- I guess I wanna know what you do see, what do you want to do to me when you look at me.”

Tony nodded solemnly, his shoulders going tight. “...Sometimes, on a bad day, I still see you and think about how much I wish you were dead.”

“That’s fair,” Bucky assented.

Tony sneered. “Fair? That’s the farthest thing from fair. Killing you wouldn’t bring them back, it wouldn’t punish HYDRA, and frankly you’ve been dead before and it didn’t change anything.”

“So we’re stalemated?”

“Are we? You still haven’t told me what you want.”

Bucky looked down at the floor, the hair that had slipped out of his ponytail hanging forward over his face. “Penance, I guess.”

“Penance? Eww. Can you be more Catholic? Just ask Steve where you can get a flogger. I’m sure he’s got one that he uses to mortify his flesh every so often with all his myriad perceived failings. Hell, he might even lend a helping hand.”

“That’s not it. I don’t care about God,” Bucky stopped and shook himself mentally. It had been ridiculous to think that there would ever be any price he could pay, any penance he could perform that would repair what had happened. Some things just couldn’t be mended and acceptance was the better part of maturity in those instances. “I- You shouldn’t have to-”

“No. Fuck you. You came here. You asked me questions and I answered them. Don’t tell me what I should and shouldn’t have to do. The least you can fucking do is answer me back, Barnes.”

Any other time Bucky would have bristled at being yelled at, at having someone demand something from him. But this was Tony, and in some perverse way Bucky felt like he owed him this. 

“The penance doesn’t matter to me unless it matters to you. It’s not about the pain, it’s about earning the absolution.”

“So what? Put you over my knee and spank you until you cry? You into some good old fashioned daddy kink, Barnes?”

“Hell, no. But I would be willing to hurt for it.”

Tony spun on the stool, the little seat rotating back and forth as he braced his feet on the crossbar. He picked up a wrench, tossing it a couple of times in his hand. “A little roleplay, then?”

“I’ve done stranger, and if the internet speculations on your sex life are any indicator, so have you,” Bucky said.

“Touché. So what? You want me to pretend murder you?”

“Well, I’m not real keen on dying just yet and I don’t think you actually want me dead. If you did, you’d have done it already.”

Tony stopped spinning. “Don’t tell me what I want.”

“Come on, Stark. They’re called ‘fantasies’ for a reason. Just because it crosses your mind-”

Tony held up a hand. “Thanks Dr. Phil, but spare me the lecture on human psychology. Also, sit down. I’m sitting, you should be sitting. This is weird enough.”

Before Bucky could make it to the nearest workbench and grab a stool, DUM-E zipped by, beeping loudly and brandishing a stool. Quickly it backed up and thrust the stool at Bucky so that he had to dodge to avoid a black eye and broken nose.

“Thanks, DUM-E,” he said, giving the robot a gentle pat on the arm. 

It beeped merrily and zoomed away.

“He’s friendly,” Bucky commented as he sat down.

Tony tipped his head at the robot. “Certainly didn’t get that trait from me.”

Bucky nodded and waited for Tony to make the next move. He seemed like he was on the edge of something, and Bucky was willing to take the wait-and-see approach. 

“So,” Tony continued. “What’s on the table? More importantly, what’s off the table?”

“Off the table is permanent damage, mutilation, maiming, any injuries that could require hospitalization, and death.”

“That… that is a disconcertingly short list of things that you are not okay with. Nothing on there about guns or knives or communicable diseases-”

“I can’t catch anything,” Bucky interjected.

“That’s not the point. Your limits are startlingly minimal. You didn’t even include rape.”

“HYDRA didn’t give me limits. I learned to do without. These are pretty sufficient in that light,” Bucky pointed out, steering clear of Tony’s second observation.

Tony tossed the wrench another couple of times and spun the stool before responding. “So what? I just beat the hell out of you, maybe a little friendly garroting, and then we call it a day? What’s enough look like?” Tony asked.

“I think to me enough might look like you saying it’s enough.”

“I guess that fits with your whole ‘penance’ thing.” Tony shifted on the stool and jumped down. “Fine. We’ll do this, see what happens. I’ll need a few days to plan something, set up some safety protocols with J. If you have any medical shit I should know about, any other hard limits you come up with, something — I don’t know what — let me know. But, uh, I’ll get back to you.”

Tony was already scribbling furiously on a tablet, his back turned to Bucky. Bucky hopped down and quietly slipped out of the lab. He paused on the elevator, trying to decide where exactly he wanted to go. If sleep had been out of reach earlier, it was halfway across the galaxy by now. He punched the button for the common area with designs on ice cream and a late night movie.

*****

Bucky’s phone buzzed, temporarily pausing his podcast. He’d turned off email notifications ages ago, but some things seemed to do as they wished. He poked the little icon and it opened to an email from Tony. It was blank save for two attachments: Medical Questionnaire and Things That You Won’t Object to Even Though You Should.

Bucky tapped the emergency stop button on the treadmill and stepped off with an eagerness that was probably abnormal for someone planning their own torture and murder.

*****

Three days after Bucky filled out the questionnaires he got a text while Steve was out at some charity ball.

_Come to the lab. I’ve got that thing for your arm. TS_

Bucky reread the text message exactly once and then put his phone in his pocket. The arm was working flawlessly and there were no planned upgrades or modifications. 

He changed into a pair of sweats, an ugly t-shirt, and some cheap flip flops — nothing he would miss if things went the way that he expected.

*****

The glass doors to the lab slid open and Tony was hunkered down over a workbench. Apparently, JARVIS was feeling more participatory today and he turned down the stereo before Bucky ever had the chance to knock.

“Barnes, your chair’s over there. I’ve got a new servo for your upper arm, should increase reaction time by about 15%.”

“Cool.” Bucky’s heart was pounding, his chest tight with anxiety. 

“His chair” was the repurposed dentists’ chair that Tony kept in the lab. It wasn’t Bucky’s favorite place, not by a long shot. It reclined, and Tony had fitted a support assembly to the side of it to hold up the arm when it was powered off for maintenance and repair. HYDRA had a chair for maintenance just like it. But Tony, for however much he might hate Bucky, clearly hadn’t done it to be cruel — it was a matter of convenience — and Bucky, ever grateful for Tony’s help, didn’t complain. 

A tray with the regular assortment of tools sat uncovered by the side of the chair. That much, at least, Tony had done for Bucky’s benefit from the very beginning, and he had done it without being asked. Bucky knew that Tony was entirely too familiar with what it felt like to have someone take you apart and put you back together. The display of tools was a peace offering, one that promised no intentional surprises.

But today the tray, however innocuous it looked, meant something else entirely. The arm was pretense, a means to an end, one that promised to hurt and hopefully heal. It took Tony another couple of minutes to finish up whatever he was working on and Bucky spent that time focusing on the mission. 

In a way turning it into a mission made it easier. Everything since 1943 had been one set of orders to survive after the next. What the Army didn’t teach him about staying cool-headed when everything around him was going to shit, HYDRA beat into him later. He had his marching orders, the rest was just waiting. 

“I’m gonna take off the upper arm plating and power you down for a bit.”

Bucky nodded, the buzz of anxiety making the hair on his good arm stand on end, and he watched as Tony pried the plates apart with a screwdriver. It hurt. They hadn’t figured out how to make that stop yet, but they’d gotten good at minimizing it. He grit his teeth and Tony deftly slipped a metal rod into the casing, depressing the manual shutdown switch. Immediately, the pain stopped and Bucky relaxed back into the chair for the time being. 

His arm, now effectively dead, was harnessed into the support assembly and hoisted up so that Tony could access the back. The plates came off a few at a time, the metal clinking in the tray as they were set down. 

“Ow, shit,” Bucky exclaimed.

“Sorry, sorry. It’s got a residual charge,” Tony apologized.

Bucky looked over to see Tony setting an empty needle and syringe back on the tray.

“Oh, what the fuck,” Bucky groaned. Of course Tony would do that. The drug reservoirs in the back of the arm were long since gone, but the port that connected them to the basilic vein remained. It had been far too integrated for a simple removal, and covered as it was by the arm’s plating, Bucky didn’t see a reason to go through surgery to remove it. 

He blinked, his eyes already heavy and his head fuzzy. His first instinct was to fight back, to take what little time he had before the drugs knocked him out and make a break for it. But that’s not what he had agreed to. Adrenaline flooded his system but his heart rate kept dropping and Bucky closed his eyes, letting the drug take effect.

*****

Pain was the first thing Bucky registered. The impact of the floor against his right shoulder and head had been enough to jar him back to consciousness but the pain quickly dulled. He blinked his eyes open and focused.

Tony’s shoes were next to his face. It was an immediate point of concern but nothing he could remedy. Instead, he glanced around. 

They were in an elevator given the mechanical hum of their enclosed surroundings. But this elevator was larger than the passenger car in the main elevator bank and significantly less ornate. So the lab’s freight elevator. Bucky had guessed there was one — how else did all of Stark’s myriad lab instruments and supplies get to the lab without first going through the lobby. 

Bucky could feel the directional movement — they were going down — but he tried not to guess where. Soon though, the hum of the motor deepened and the temperature of the air dropped a degree, maybe two. They were underground.

The door opened with a perfunctory _ding_ and Bucky looked up. The toe of Tony’s shoe collided with Bucky’s mouth and Bucky instinctively curled in on himself while spitting out blood. Tony didn’t pause, grabbing Bucky by his left arm and dragging him out of the elevator. 

Bucky tried to get footing, to use his legs to take the strain off of his arms which were cuffed behind his back, but his legs were still too uncoordinated to accomplish anything. By the time he was dumped on the floor again Bucky had lost his remaining flip flop and twisted his right ankle. 

“Stay,” ordered Tony.

Bucky curled up and shifted his right arm to alleviate the strain, but he couldn’t get enough leverage to resituate his left arm in any way that would ease the bolts of pain that came from the strain on the chassis system in his chest, shoulder, and back. There would be no way to break the cuffs with his arm powered down.

He spat out another mouthful of blood and checked his teeth with his tongue. None of them were loose, but his lips were split badly enough that it would take at least thirty-six hours to heal. 

Tony’s footsteps were the only warning Bucky got before a knife sliced through the fabric of his shirt, nicking his skin as it went. He gritted his teeth, staying still, as Tony ripped the shirt away and started on his sweats and underwear. 

The concrete was cold against his skin but felt good with the way his heart beat anxiously, heating his entire body. Another kick landed viciously in his left kidney and Bucky arched back against the blow. Before he could recover a stun baton connected with his temple.

Pain roared through his head and down his neck. He whited out, his brain short circuiting. When the shock stopped, Bucky’s body went limp and he drew heaving breaths, his lungs burning from the oxygen deprivation. He could feel the wetness on the floor under him where his bladder had released.

“You’re disgusting,” Tony spat.

Bucky gasped against the floor and Tony flicked the switch on the baton again. He jabbed Bucky in the neck hard enough to make the whole side of his neck ache just from the impact. From there he moved onto Bucky’s back, giving special attention to the kidney he’d kicked earlier. Bucky’s stomach, which he had tried to protect by curling in on himself, was shocked again and again until there was nothing left but pain and a primal urge to escape. The only thing that kept him where he was were the decades of training and abuse that HYDRA had heaped on him — the belief that staying still, or as still as he could, would bring a quicker end to his torment. 

Even so, when Tony tried to use his foot to shove Bucky onto his back, he rolled into a tight ball, his legs clenched together and his knees tight to his chest. 

“You’re only making this worse on yourself,” Tony commented, but he didn’t wait for Bucky to reconsider.

Bucky gasped and relaxed into the floor for a moment, grateful for the reprieve. The sounds of Tony moving around, of plastic tearing and clinking metal — it all seemed less important and less immediate than the pain in his body. He knew that this was far from the end, but the mission parameters were endurance, survival, penance — nothing more.

This time when Tony kicked him it was to roll him to his front and Bucky only put up a token struggle. He could see now that Tony was wearing the gauntlets from his armor and held what looked like very thick metal kebab skewers in his hand. 

“When I move you where I want you, you go and you stay there,” Tony growled.

A foot swept along the front of Bucky’s ankle and foot pointing his toes straight out and making it lie flat on the floor. Tony knelt down and grabbed him by the ankle. The metal rods clinked against the concrete as Tony dropped them next to Bucky’s calf. 

“Hold still,” ordered Tony. 

There a moment where the rod touched the back of Bucky’s calf, a moment where Bucky’s mind raced as any number of horrible scenarios flashed through his mind. And then it was driven through his leg. 

Bucky shouted and thrashed, but the pin was firmly seated in the concrete below. The struggling only added waves of nauseating pain to agony and he focused all his attention on staying still. 

A second pin followed the first, and then a third. Bucky gasped, his cheek pressed against the rough concrete. His whole leg ached from where the pins were wedged between the tibia and fibula. As soon as Tony was done with the first leg, the picked up the skewers and grabbed Bucky’s other leg. That leg Tony stretched wide, leaving Bucky genitals and ass open and unprotected. He pulled and pulled and pulled, Bucky’s legs moving wider until the pins through his left leg pulled hard against the bone.

Unable to simply lie still through the agonizing pain Bucky twisted, trying to resist and ultimately escape. He screamed at the utter futility as Tony fastened his armored hand around Bucky’s ankle and forced his foot flat against the floor. Tony was just as efficient with these pins as the first set, and after just a few seconds Bucky was pinioned, skewered alive like a specimen in some sadistic child’s bug collection. 

Tony flicked one of the rods and Bucky fought against the urge to flinch away. There was blood pooling under his legs, already clotting and sticking to the floor. Bucky could feel it, tacky and cold against his skin. There had been other times that he had lain in his own blood, times where Lukin or someone handler had beaten him half to death and left him to sleep it off in some dirty cell. Those times had been terrifying, too, but he had been obedient and gotten to the other side. 

He drew a shuddering breath and focused on the mission objective — endurance, survival, penance. 

The baton clicked behind him and then the world narrowed to where Tony held the prod against his taint. After what felt like an eternity it moved to his testicles and a few moments after that he blacked out. 

Bucky blinked to consciousness as waves of pain rolled out into his side and back, and the familiar sound of fists on flesh assaulted his ears.

“Wake the fuck up. We are _not_ done,” Tony growled as he slammed his bare fists into Bucky’s ribs over and over again.

Bucky felt one of his ribs crack and then break altogether after three successive blows to the same place. 

“I’m- I’m awake,” he rasped.

No handler had ever tolerated so much as a splintered “please” but Tony seemed to be all but demanding an answer, Bucky’s obvious signs of wakefulness not enough to stop the beating. 

One more punch landed and then Tony stood up. Bucky had expected Tony to say something, anything, but the only sound was the susurrus of denim rubbing together and a faint _zip_ of Tony’s fly. 

Bucky swallowed and closed his eyes. He’d been raped before, most of his handlers had taken the liberty at least once. But it never got easier, never hurt less, the fear and the degradation always made his chest ache and his stomach turn. He breathed through his nose — in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four.

Mission parameters: endurance, survival, penance.

He felt the air shift as Tony knelt between his splayed legs. Tony’s knees bumped Bucky’s thighs, jarring the pins, and Bucky tried to stifle a whimper. He blinked his eyes to stop the tears that were forming. There would be tears by the end of it, he knew. No amount of blinking would be enough.

After Steve had brought him in, Bucky had relished the fact that he would never be _here_ again; it had been a balm against many things. That he had entered into this situation willingly took away some of the edge of panic, but the sense memory of previous experiences largely overwhelmed that. 

A condom wrapper tore open and then there was the wet sound of Tony rolling it on. Bucky relaxed his body as much as he could — just because anal fissures could heal without major surgery didn’t mean he wanted them. Then, Tony’s dick was pressing against him. 

Tony’s right hand came to rest on the floor beside Bucky as Tony leaned in. Bucky gasped and beared down against the insistent pressure. The pain in his ass was awful but manageable as Tony began thrusting. 

“I wonder what Rogers would think seeing you like this, knowing you asked for it.”

The mention of Steve made Bucky’s heart clench. No matter what HYDRA did Steve never acted like Bucky was disgusting or pitiful or broken. But this, asking to be tortured for penance — what the hell would it accomplish? Howard and Maria were dead and he did it. There was no changing that fact and the idea that he wouldn’t carry that guilt until the day that he died was ridiculous. Letting someone abuse him because he thought the abuse was worth it to make the relationship work — because he thought he deserved it — it’s what he read about in his therapy books, it’s how people justified staying in abusive marriages. Enduring the abuse never made anything better, and later they just had more pieces left to pick up.

He wanted to cry, to break apart and sob with the horror of it all, but crying was something the Asset was not allowed. Instead silent tears rolled down his cheeks as he tried to keep his breathing steady through the agonizing push and pull of Tony’s dick in his ass. 

The rhythm of the pain had always helped Bucky manage it, helped him breathe into and through each stroke. But his legs. Lord in heaven his legs screamed in a way that he couldn’t just ride out. It felt like they were being torn apart, and the bones ached down into his toes and up into his hips. And no matter how hard Tony thrust, the pins held him in place.

But where other handlers had taken interminable minutes to finish, Tony was done in what had to be less than five. Relief flooded Bucky as Tony withdrew, and he panted into the cold embrace of the concrete.

The relief was short-lived as Tony pressed the baton against Bucky’s aching hole. The wait between contact and the discharge gave Bucky’s panic time to grow exponentially. By the time that the pain hit, Bucky had flexed his right arm tight, barely resisting the impulse to struggle against the cuffs.

He screamed, all the air in his lungs rushing out as his voice cracked under the strain. Once his lungs were empty his stomach began to cramp as the pain made his abs draw up tight. Eventually his vision began to grey out and he sagged into the floor. Still the shock went on. Finally, when everything had gone dark and the last of his consciousness was slipping away, the pain stopped. Bucky gasped, his lungs burning and all the muscles of his body screaming for oxygen.

The baton clattered on a countertop as Tony hastily disposed of it, and Bucky lay limply on the concrete. A fine tremor had set in, and his entire body, even his legs, shook as shock began to take hold. The pain of the tremors in his legs made Bucky’s stomach turn.

Tony came back and Bucky could feel the weight of his left hand resting on his calf. One by one, Tony ripped out the pins, and then moved to the other leg until none were left. Bucky desperately wanted to roll onto his side, to curl into himself, but Tony hadn’t said he could move and even though he wanted to curl up where he felt protected, he wanted a punishment even less.

With the pins removed blood began pooling more freely under Bucky. While blood loss always looked deadly, Bucky had long since learned that he could lose a startling quantity without even passing out. Still, given the rate of bleeding, an arterial puncture was likely, though it would take more than that to really set him back. 

“Get up,” Tony snarled as he grabbed Bucky by the arm. 

Like before, Bucky did his best to get his feet under him. He managed to stumble along behind Tony, bolts of white hot agony racing up his shins with every step. Twice he stumbled, slipping from the slickness of the blood that coated his feet. Both times Tony roughly jerked Bucky sending him stumbling forward, making it even harder for him to regain his footing.

Bucky was watching his feet, trying to use his visual spatial awareness to help his brain get his legs to cooperate as they stumbled through a doorway at the back of the lab. When he looked up his knees buckled and he wrenched his arm to get free. 

“NO! No, no, no, no!” Bucky shrieked. All conditioning, training, programming — every last ounce of willpower vanished under a torrent of pure terror.

“Shut up,” Tony growled. He dug his fingers into Bucky’s arm and twisted so that Bucky lost his footing again. 

The pain in his legs, the broken rib, his ass — none of it meant anything next to escape. Bucky kept screaming, pleading, and begging as Tony flung him to the floor at the foot of the Chair.

Where Tony had gotten a Chair didn’t matter. He had one and Bucky was going into it. Two years of counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, neuropsychologists, neurologists — none of it would matter. His hard won independence and identity would be gone and Bucky was too weak to stop it. 

Tony grabbed Bucky’s metal arm and twisted so that the gap in the paneling was accessible. There was a prick in the stump of his arm, one that again registered in his shoulder, and Bucky felt the coolness of whatever Tony had injected into the port slide through his veins. Immediately, his heart began to slow and his brain went fuzzy, the pain that consumed him dulling. 

This time, though, he didn’t pass out. He floated in a space that was nothing but pain and fear, unable to cobble together enough thoughts to do anything more than feel. There was no mission — no objective, no parameters, no path to completion. There was escape and there was failure, everything else was nothing more than a detail.

Behind him, the cuffs clicked, the lock between them released, but the halves stayed around his wrists. Then he was moving, or rather he was being moved. The world tilted and Bucky struggled against whatever held him knowing that whatever it was should be escaped. He jerked and twisted and suddenly he was falling. 

He hit the floor hard enough to knock the wind out of his lungs, and then he was hauled up again and flung into the chair. The magnetic cuff on his right wrist attached easily to the armrest of the chair. Bucky twisted his torso, the world spinning and the Chair frame whining as he tried to pull the cuff free, but Tony secured his left arm before he could gain enough leverage. From there the rest of the restraints snapped into place and Bucky knew he was trapped.

“Please, Tony, please. Don’t do this,” he begged, his words slurring slightly with the drugs. 

“Is that how my mother begged?” Tony asked. “Surely she came up with something a little more creative than ‘please don’t do this’?”

“I’m sorry, Tony. Howard was a friend, I never wanted to kill him. Please, what they did to me, I didn’t even know him. Don’t do this, please don’t do this.” Tears streaked down Bucky’s face but Tony just kept moving around him — flicking switches, moving equipment, connecting an IV to the port in Bucky’s left arm.

Desperate to get Tony to listen, Bucky tried again. “Please, please don’t-”

“There was a manual in the SHIELD/HYDRA file dump. Nat must have pulled it from some other server. It was part of the legal shenanigans used to clear your name after DC. Very helpful in putting this together.”

This- this was a game, just roleplay, Bucky remembered as his mind shook itself free of the last creeping tendrils of whatever Tony had dosed him with. Tony wouldn’t really wipe him — he had to believe that. But decades of abuse made that rationalization seem paper thin and his heart beat erratically in his chest in warning of what was happening.

“I’m going to wipe you, Barnes,” Tony stated matter-of-factly as he swung a computer monitor in front of Bucky. “But before I do I want you to see what you’re going to become. Steve never wanted to show you the footage, never even wanted to admit to you that it existed, but I’ve got it right here.”

Tony snagged the tablet from the cart by the Chair and tapped it. A video popped up on the monitor and Bucky recoiled. The security video from the helicarrier showed Steve standing on a catwalk in front of the computer core. Even with the poor quality and the distance between Steve and the camera, Bucky could read Steve’s lips when he said, “Please don’t make me do this.”

Tears dripped off his chin and he watched in mute horror at the reality of what had happened that day. Steve had told him and he’d been honest, but nothing could really prepare Bucky for watching himself rage blindly against Steve. The fight, and therefore the video which had been neatly cut together from security camera shots from different angles, couldn’t have lasted more than four minutes, but it felt like the most horrifying four minutes of his life.

Beatings, rape, the Chair, shock — all that happened to Bucky. All of it was terrifying and excruciating. But hurting someone else, nearly killing Steve just for having the temerity to love and trust the Winter Soldier, that was the worst. It was worse than killing — all of his other victims had been terrified, had fought him like he deserved. But Steve just lay there and took it, willing to die rather than hurt Bucky. A thousand beatings would be better than watching Steve slip through the shattered glass panels of the helicarrier into the cold water below.

When it was over, Bucky closed his eyes. He sobbed, something ugly and broken, full of fear and regret, shame and inadequacy, anger and despair. Even Tony’s rage seemed dampened as he pushed the monitor back out of the way. 

A motor whirred as the Chair’s halo moved into position and while part of him screamed to escape, to struggle, to do anything to preserve his hard-won identity and autonomy, another part of him felt like he had earned it.

“I’m so sorry, Tony. Nothing will never be enough,” Bucky stammered.

Wordlessly, Tony slipped the biteguard into Bucky’s mouth. Nausea welled up, old memories of being wiped making his stomach roll, but Bucky swallowed and set his jaw.

A switch flipped and Bucky heard the click right before the white hot pain of the Chair swept through him.

*****

Bucky came to in a series of discombobulated blinks that felt like they occurred in quick succession but Bucky knew were probably several minutes apart. When he finally cobbled together enough situational awareness he began a rapid-fire inventory of his body. The most pressing concerns were his legs and ribs. His legs, while injured, were not actively bleeding. At least one rib was broken, two probable fractures in adjacent ribs.

Experimentally Bucky flexed his left hand. It was fully operational and neither it, nor his right hand, were restrained. The mouthguard was gone and lifting his head and turning to look around, Bucky found that he was still in the Chair. 

Still.

That implied a previous state… a memory… 

In an instant everything came crashing back and Bucky jerked forward, stumbling out of the Chair on aching legs. Bucky grabbed the back of his left arm where the plates had been removed, but everything had been reassembled and when he turned to look back at the Chair, the IV was still there with the catheter still dangling from the end of the tubing.

Free from the Chair, he started taking in his surroundings almost dispassionately. He looked down at his body, but the blood that had coated him had been mostly wiped away. A few feet away on the floor was a neatly folded stack of clothes with a piece of paper on top that just said “Barnes” in Tony’s distinctive scientist’s scrawl. Bucky picked up the clothes and tugged them on before stumbling back into the other room.

Tony was mopping the floor, though any visible traces of the blood were already gone. Bucky could smell alcohol and he turned to see an empty bottle of Jim Beam that had clearly been sitting on a shelf long enough for the label to peel. Still on autopilot and assessing his surroundings, he took a minute to observe Tony. 

He seemed steady enough wielding the mop over already clean concrete, but Bucky could make out the fine tremor that Tony was trying to conceal by gripping the mop handle so tightly that his hands blanched.

“How much was in the bottle?” Bucky asked.

Tony shook his head. “Only about half.”

Bucky looked back at the bottle which declared it to contain 500mL. Half of that wouldn’t be enough to kill Tony, but he would definitely need to sleep it off soon. He also might not feel so good when he woke up. But then Bucky probably wouldn’t feel too great either so what the hell. 

“Tony-”

“Don’t,” he croaked. 

Bucky stayed where he was, watching as the tremor grew and spread. 

Tentatively, he stepped forward. He hadn’t forgotten what Tony had done, but it felt… remote, far removed from what was happening right then. Tony looked up in alarm as Bucky moved closer, and he stopped.

“Can I call someone for you?” Bucky asked softly.

“No, I think- do you need anything? Your legs? How’s, you know, everything else?” Tony asked. 

Bucky shook his head. “It’s all healing. Forty-eight hours ought to fix everything, including the ribs.”

Tony nodded jerkily. “Great, good.”

For a minute they just stood there, Tony clinging to the mop and Bucky watching Tony closely. He was clearly in distress, but Bucky wasn’t sure how to approach him. Then, all of the sudden, Tony shook himself out of his torpor and went back to mopping.

“The floor’s already clean,” Bucky pointed out.

Tony froze as if he had been caught and put the mop back into the bucket. He rolled the bucket over to the corner and then turned to face Bucky, but didn’t move. 

“It was enough,” Tony said bleakly. “I don’t think I’ll ever fantasize about killing anyone, much less you, ever again.”

Bucky nodded. 

Mission parameters: endurance, survival, penance. 

Mission status: complete. 

It was relief. It was freedom. It was… something. Something when Bucky never thought he’d have anything to abate the gnawing guilt in his chest. But somehow what should have been cathartic for them both ended up with Tony trembling and sweating, his eyes bloodshot.

“You regret it,” Bucky observed simply.

Tony locked eyes with Bucky. Already barely holding it together and probably at least a couple sheets to the wind, it wasn’t more than a moment later before the dam broke and tears began to slide down Tony’s face. Quickly, he swiped at his cheeks to brush them away.

“That was hardly the worst thing anyone’s ever done to me,” Bucky offered.

Tony laughed brittle and hoarse. “But I did it.”

“You did. But you’ve also objectively done worse. I’m not special,” Bucky pointed out.

“You’re not helping,” Tony pointed out weakly. 

“Do you want me to lie?” 

“Wouldn’t believe you if you did.”

Bucky nodded. “Fair enough.”

Tony ran his fingers through his hair and sighed shakily. “Were you wanting to talk about it?”

“Yeah, if you think you can handle it right now.”

“Here or…” 

“Here, I think,” Bucky answered. Escaping the place where he was so recently hurt and tortured seemed appealing but only at the surface level. Bucky had long since learned to exorcise his demons before he left the room the first time or it became that much harder later on.

Tony nodded and then motioned towards a workbench where a couple of stools were tucked up under the counter. As Bucky crossed the room he paused at the sink for a drink of water only to draw up short when he saw what was in it.

A strap-on harness with a very average-sized dildo had been carelessly tossed into the sink, the condom still on it. Bucky catalogued this information quickly and then cupped his hand under the faucet and turned the tap. He drank his fill, ignoring the foul smell of the used condom, and then joined Tony at the workbench.

“You saw I take it,” Tony said.

“I did.”

“Questions?”

Bucky shook his head. “No.”

“Good.” Tony snagged a screwdriver from the workbench and began to roll it in his palm. “You don’t seem upset.”

Bucky shrugged. “I haven’t really thought about it yet.”

“Right. Because you need to think about it first,” Tony agreed with a disbelieving glare.

Bucky didn’t say anything. The whole situation still seemed remote, the emotions from the experience still neatly compartmentalized. He closed his eyes and leaned into the memory. 

Fear and pain came first. Those were always first. But, at the outset at least, those were easy enough to tolerate. He’d known his survival was assured, but more than that the end was something more than forgiveness though less than exoneration. In a way, it was not unlike what passed for field medicine with HYDRA — agonizing, frightening, and none too gentle, but end result being something better than how he’d before they had patched him up. 

In retrospect, the shocks and the beating seemed almost cleansing, though Bucky was aware that he felt differently about it at the time. The rape, was less so. The first thought that sprang to mind was a shower. Bucky could think of nothing he wanted more than to scald his skin and scrub himself until he was pink all over. He wanted the sensation of Tony off of him and out of him. Even though Tony had used a condom on what turned out to be a prosthetic dick, Bucky still mulled over the idea of an enema just to wash everything clean. 

Beyond his immediate need to be physically clean of the experience, Bucky felt vulnerable and small. His stomach churned. The feeling could have been anger, but it wasn't because he couldn't forget that he had asked for this. Tony had even brought up rape, penetration, specifically — and Bucky hadn't said no, had he? The freedom of his choice was undercut entirely by the fact of his choice, and he was left with self-loathing and doubt.

But in any case the strap-on was of particular note. It wasn’t surprising to Bucky that Tony hadn’t been able to perform in the situation, but it was curious that he had created a workaround to be able to play out the scenario anyway. Two options presented themselves. Option one: Tony couldn’t get it up but still wanted to rape Bucky. Option two: Tony couldn’t get it up because he didn’t want to rape Bucky but for some reason forced himself into the situation anyway. Given Tony’s current emotional distress, Bucky put his money on the second option. 

Tabling that for the moment, Bucky moved onto the Chair. The recollection brought immediate distress and he opened his eyes to dispel the images of it that lingered in his mind. Tony was watching quietly, his red eyes puffy from silent crying. 

“You alright?” Tony asked, his voice more steady than before.

“Yeah, yeah. I was just thinking.” Bucky ran a hand through his hair, pulling it out of his face and tugging at it gently in the process.

“What about?” Tony said, his eyes already back on the screwdriver that he continued to twirl between his fingers.

“Just, well, a few things. I’m not done thinking yet, but… the strap-on. You didn’t do that because you couldn’t get it up but wanted to. You did it because you thought that, I don’t know, that I wanted it? So you put yourself through that for me.”

Tony stopped and gripped the screwdriver fiercely in his hand. “Not exactly.”

“No, that’s exactly what it is,” Bucky argued, an unpleasant realization dawning on him. “In the lab, when I first proposed this to you, you said, ‘call it philanthropy.’ You went along with this to help me, but you didn’t want it at all.”

“Barnes, you’re ruining the illusion,” Tony said flatly.

“Too late. I want to know why.”

“Why? Why not? Shouldn’t one of us be happy? It can’t be me.”

“So I went through all of this and what? It’s still not enough for you? The hell do I do with that?” Bucky asked. He wanted to yell at Tony, to scream, but everything suddenly felt too raw, too much, and he felt small and helpless again like he had under Tony. Like nothing in the world could give him the control over his life that he needed to make it tolerable.

“You’ve got it all wrong. You coming to me like that, that was enough. I could have told you that, but you never would have believed me. I had to sell it.”

Bucky nodded mechanically, knowing from Tony’s tone of voice that agreement was the proper course of action, but he was still confused and unsure of what all of it meant. His therapist had told him that he had issues with forgiving himself, but Bucky figured that he just had more to forgive himself for than most people did. But this meant that Tony saw it too and then arranged all of this just to help Bucky move on from the one thing he could take off his shoulders. 

“Did-” Bucky swallowed his words, his head spinning with so many thoughts and feelings and half-formed realizations. “Was your heart in any of it?”

Tony laughed, the sound brittle and sharp. “Oh the first few punches were pretty satisfying, I’ll definitely admit that much. Maybe even a couple of the shocks. And don’t think that plan came out of nowhere.”

Okay. Okay this Bucky could work with. The pain had meaning to Tony, too. It wasn’t all about Bucky. 

“So what happened to the ‘friendly garroting’?”

“I couldn’t do it, alright? I could barely do what I did.”

Bucky wiped at his eyes again. “So the Chair was a metaphor?”

“Read into it whatever suits you. It just is what it is.”

_It is what it is._ Steve hated hearing Bucky say that because Steve never could just accept the shit that happened without fighting, but Bucky understood what Tony meant. Some things just were. 

He closed his eyes trying to refocus on the matter at hand. But the Chair was a thing of insurmountable fear that loomed large in his mind in a way that filled his entire mental field of vision. He blinked his eyes open again almost immediately. 

“I forgot what we were doing with the Chair. I thought- I thought it was real. I thought-” Bucky realized he was crying again when a tear ran down his cheek leaving a cool wetness in its wake. He brushed at his cheeks and turned his mind back to the matter at hand, but Tony spoke first.

“The Chair and the video were over the line. That was real in a way that the rest of it…”

Bucky heard the unspoken “wasn’t” and knew why Tony didn’t finish his thought. It was all real — the healing wounds all over his body would more than attest to that. But Tony wasn’t wrong that some things were more real than others. 

“Everything else was roleplay,” Bucky corrected. “But the Chair and the video were real life.”

“Right.”

“I’m… not mad. It was a lot, but it gives me a lot to think about, a lot to process about what happened that I hadn’t faced like that before. In time, it’ll be alright,” Bucky assured Tony and himself.

Tony nodded but didn’t look up from the screwdriver still clenched in his fist. “Is there anything else?”

Bucky shook his head, strands of his hair falling back into his face. “No. I think I’m done for now. You?”

“Done,” Tony agreed with a nod.

Tony first, and then Bucky, stood and walked to the elevator. The doors opened immediately, the car still on their floor. Bucky looked around, but any trace of blood was gone. He looked at Tony but he was leaning against the back of the elevator staring vacantly at the floor. The tense silence that pervaded their shared time, usually centered around the arm, had been replaced with weariness and grief. Bucky’s persistent hypervigilance felt almost unnecessary and even though Tony had just hurt him fairly substantially, Bucky found that it didn’t really matter all of the sudden.

The elevator dinged and the doors opened back in the lab where all of it had started. They stepped out of the elevator but stopped, turning to face one another.

“So I’m gonna head back up to Steve’s,” Bucky began, still unable to claim his place in the Tower. “You gonna be alright?”

“You’ve asked me that at least sixteen times. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

That was what people said at funerals when the grief made living feel like a constant sprint uphill through mud. But grief was probably the most appropriate thing either of them could be feeling. This hadn’t been about just them, it had been about Howard and Maria, too. It was the final loose end that had needed tying up before either of them could really lay Tony’s parents to rest. 

“Get the hell out and go sleep, Bucky.”

Bucky blinked and stared in shock at Tony. Barnes, Manchurian Candidate, Captain America’s Boy-toy, Lefty — Tony had called him a lot of things but never just “Bucky.” 

He nodded. “Uh, yeah. You too.” 

And then he stumbled out of the lab and into the elevator, his legs still throbbing. When the elevator spit him out on his floor, Bucky still wasn’t sure what the hell to make of Tony calling him by his name. A lot of outcomes had crossed Bucky’s mind, but this particular one was something unexpected. As he stepped into the shower, throwing the borrowed clothes into the hamper, he couldn’t exactly put his finger on what it all meant, but he also couldn’t think of a single way it could be bad.

*****

“Barton, did you drink all the coffee?” Tony shouted from the kitchen.

“No, there was some left. Bucky had it,” Clint called back from the sofa.

“Belay that. There was half a cup and best, and Clint had the rest of the pot. The thimble-full he left was so he could blame me when you asked,” Bucky countered from his seat at the raised bar.

“Clint, don’t blame Bucky. You’re not fooling anyone,” Tony shouted back.

Steve nudged Bucky’s foot with his and Bucky looked at him.

“He calls you ‘Bucky’ now?” Steve asked under his breath, his eyebrows creeping halfway up his forehead.

Bucky shrugged. “I guess.”

“Well, I’m glad you two worked it out,” Steve said with a smile.

“Yeah, I guess we did.”


End file.
